Megalith plans 105-unit Dumbo rental – with parking

Developer Megalith Capital Management plans to build a 105-unit residential rental building at a plot it bought last year for $30.6 million from the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Dumbo. A relative newcomer to the business, Megalith intends to put up a 12-story luxury building at 177 Front Street, between Jay and Bridge streets, where a one story garage currently stands, the firm’s managing principal and co-founder Samvir Sidhu told The Real Deal.

The one- and two-bedroom apartments will mostly ask between $65 and $70 per square foot – which pencils out to between $3,000 and $6,000 per month – in rent, Sidhu said. The project will be built under the so-called 80/20 program, meaning 20 percent of the apartments will be affordable and the balance will rent at market rates.

The building is being designed by Suffern, N.Y.-based Aufgang Architects and will feature a local restaurant – the identity of which is yet to be determined – on the ground floor as well as a rare and coveted commodity in prime Brooklyn: parking.

Sidhu said the ground-up development would differ from much of the other Dumbo housing stock because it would have more efficient floor plans.

“Two Trees has done a lot of the hard work [in Dumbo] but a lot of their projects are conversions, so they are less efficient,” Sidhu said. The Front Street building, he said, will use space efficiently and allocate it in the fashion to which luxury tenants are accustomed. The project, which will be built in partnership with Manhattan-based developer Urban Realty Partners, is scheduled to be completed in 2016.

Megalith is also converting the building next door, at 200 Water Street, to condominiums. That project received the green light from the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s last month. The Front Street project is right outside the Dumbo Historic District, and therefore does not require such approvals, published reports show.